City hosts hockey festival

The spotlight shines bright on St. Albert during the Rogers Hometown Hockey Tour.

The weekend festivities on St. Anne Street will bring the community together as one team united in the celebration of hockey.

“What you’re going to see and what you’re going to experience is a great winter family hockey festival,” said Chris May, senior director of entertainment at SDI Marketing, which handles the logistical elements of the Tour stop across 24 communities in Canada.

“It’s a great day to experience St. Albert and the hockey community of St. Albert and the hockey stories of St. Albert.”

Family fun is the name of the game for the Tour stop, presented by Scotiabank and Dodge.

“You can go out there and everything is free, the only thing you can buy on-site is food. Nothing else is for sale,” May said. “There are games for kids, there are activities for families, there are giveaways, we have local bands playing on the stage, there are contests and we’ve got great alumni on-site.”

Mark Messier, a former St. Albert Saint, Lanny McDonald and Ryan Smyth have autograph sessions scheduled on-site and hosts Ron MacLean and Tara Slone will conduct interviews for Sportsnet Central and Hockey Night in Canada.

Two-time Olympic gold medallist Meaghan Mikkelson of St. Albert will also make an appearance.

MacLean will also host Sunday’s pre-game show live from the Sportsnet Mobile Studio at 4:30 p.m. and the outdoor viewing party can watch the Edmonton Oilers at the Winnipeg Jets.

MacLean has fond memories of St. Albert and the Saints from his days covering the Red Deer Rustlers in the Alberta Junior Hockey League for CKRD radio.

“They were riotous games. It was always a rodeo when the two played,” said the Canadian icon. “The Saints, I remembered they dressed 30 guys for a warm-up one time and sort of handpicked which stars on the Red Deer team they would take out. It was really tough hockey and I used to admire the referees who could handle that hockey. Lance Roberts was a referee that came in from Edmonton and he was about the only guy I thought could handle the Saints versus the Rustlers.

“In 1982 I started doing the Rustlers’ broadcasting so I would come up to Akinsdale Arena and it’s a very humble arena, a beautiful arena. It looks like a cathedral with its cedar-arched ceiling but it was small. It only seated about 600 people and it was so intimate. You had the press box at centre ice right over the players so it was a great, great place to go and broadcast.”

St. Albert is one of three Alberta communities on the Tour stop, which started Oct. 9 in Kitchener, Ont., and ends April 3 in Winnipeg.

“We made a visit to the city and saw that great location where we can do it on St. Anne Street and just thought that this is kind of a match made in heaven here. We’ve got to make it happen in St. Albert,” May said of the June meeting with Mayor Nolan Crouse and city officials.

Finalizing the 24 communities was a challenge.

“It’s difficult because there are so many people that would like to host us and so many communities that would want the event,” May said.

“It really comes down to a variety of things. It’s where has really great hockey stories, where has really strong minor hockey support and community around that, where has a good link to NHL franchises and games that are being broadcast, where has great stories and how eager is the city to host and I tell you St. Albert has been pretty incredible since day one.

“Mayor Crouse returned my call in less than 10 minutes when I left him a message. He said St. Albert would love to host. We were out there for a meeting a couple of weeks later and it was one of the few meetings where we walked in and the city actually had a presentation ready for us. When my team walks into an initial meeting and the city is saying we want this, here is the research, we've already done on our great hockey stories and here’s what is strong in our community, it’s very, very difficult to say no and that has continued on through the past months of planning.

The Tour stop brings fans closer to the stars of the game

“On the ground it’s a huge success because of that connectivity for fans to come out and be with Mark and Ryan and Lanny and Meaghan,” MacLean said. “Tara and I are bringing the show that gives the chance for people to be on the TV and part of that experience so when Connor McDavid suits up against the Jets this weekend you could be on TV in the background when the show goes to air and that’s an appeal, especially to the young hockey fans.”

The Tour stop covers a wide swath across all 10 provinces and one territory while exploring the hockey tradition in every location.

“Our goal for this tour is not to go into Edmonton and Vancouver and Toronto specifically, but it’s to hit those places an hour or so out of town where people don’t always get in to see games as much and maybe the NHL doesn’t quite reach them as strongly as it does to someone living in those places,” May said.

After the early stages of planning, researching and recommendation of communities for the Tour stop, the process is ramped up so everything is good to go for that weekend.

“It’s really developing what the festival is, building out the programming and the on-site activities, working on the marketing plans and the community outreach, which is a very important piece of what we do,” May said.

This is the second season for the travelling road show and every stop is a whirlwind of activity for the masses. This weekend, for example, more than 10,000 people per day are expected to experience the festival.

“We all got into this last year not entirely sure what it was going to end up being. No one has ever taken something like this across the country in winter before with 15 or 16 trucks and 100 odd people and done an outdoor festival in winter in Canada. It hasn’t happened before so last year was very successful,” said May.

“We were able to take that knowledge from last year and build out these incredible activities using these incredible technologies and I think above all connecting with communities more which is really important,” he said, noting the recent addition of Samsung’s The Situation Room, where fans can test their skills against a series of hockey plays, just like NHL officials in this interactive studio, and other virtual reality components.”

The convoy of semis and trailers on the Tour stop is led by Big Rig Rick (@HTHBigRigRick), who has hauled the Sportsnet Mobile Studio from coast to coast and up to Whitehorse.

“We’ve got two groups of people. We’ve got the broadcast team who fly in every weekend and fly out for the events and that’s about 30 people or so and then we have the permanent touring team who do the full load in a weekend and are on tour for the whole six months and that’s about 45 people in total,” May said.

For more Hometown Hockey coverage, see page 35.

Additional details are online at www.hometownhockey.com and www.stalbert.ca.